2510p - First impressions and some photos

So, ordered the machine last week from a local retailer, and got it on the weekend.

I really like it for the most of it, but there are some problems.

It is built really well, and the keyboard is just amazing, very similar to those found in IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads. The touchpad is quite small, but the pointing stick works well.

The display is a bit of a disappointment, as the vertical viewing angles are quite bad.

The battery life is good, as I've got around 5-5½h usage time on a single charge.

It came with Windows vista, and did not run very well on only 1gig of memory, so I reccomend to buy it with the bigger memory option, if you plan to use Vsta with all the eye-candy. Installed Ubuntu on the machine, and it worked nearly out-of-the-box, I only needed to add one kernel option at boot-time.

If there is something you want to ask about it, I'll try to answer it.

Some pics can be found Here.

 

Did Wi-Fi work on Ubuntu out of the box? Also, what about the graphic card drivers? What option did you have to add?

 

Yeah, wlan works with WPA2. It uses the newer intel-driver instead of the old i810. Compiz-fusion works without any tweaks. You have to add all_generic_ide to the boot options (in grub) get the hdd recognized.

 

Which battery is that?

 

The default 6-cell batery.

 

hey,

i'm looking into buying either the lenovo x61s or the 2510p. About the HP, it has a 4200 rpm hard drive... how is it performing when multitasking, is it working sufficiently fine or could it be a big enough argument to go for the x61s that's got a 5400rpm hard drive?

thanks

 

hey,

i'm looking into buying either the lenovo x61s or the 2510p. About the HP, it has a 4200 rpm hard drive... how is it performing when multitasking, is it working sufficiently fine or could it be a big enough argument to go for the x61s that's got a 5400rpm hard drive?

thanks

 

The HD works very good when multi tasking

 

Hi mtor,

Looks nice. Just a few questions.

1) Is that a US keyboard layout? Not sure how long it would take me to get used to the combined <> key, the smaller left shift, etc...
2) What model did you get? 1.2 or 1.06 GHz?
3) How is the text on the screen? Seems smaller than the text on my 1920x1200 24" lcd.
4) What screen brightness/system settings did you have for 5 hrs of operation

5) I'm thinking about using this with a dual boot wamp/lamp dev and minor photoshop on the go work. Any comments on performance of certain apps compared to some other computer you are used to working with?

Thanks,
MB

 

Hi!

1) It's a Fin/Swe-keyboard, and differs from the US one.
2) U7600 (1,2GHz), 1GB, 80G, DVDRW
3) The text is a bit small, but not too small (at least for me) ~125dpi
4) That is max battery life (dim screen and radios off). Typical with normal screen brightness and wlan on is about 4½h.
5) It's actually not bad at all. I'll run some tests and report the results...

 

How far does the 6 cell stick out the back?
Is there any flex anywhere? Any screen rippling when you press on the back?
How is the fan noise, in Ubuntu primarily?

 

Oh, and is there any leakage with the backlighting?

I'm actually hoping for a measurement with the 6 cell, so I can be a little more definitive in my sleeve shopping.

 

The battery extends around 25mm from the back. The dimensions are 280x230mm.

The bottom part is very sturdy, but the screen twists a bit if you try to twist it from the sides. Only very slight rippling when you push from the back. There might be some light leakage, but I'm not sure if it's real leakage or just bad viewing angles, as it can be cured with turning the screen.

The laptop is usually very quiet. Only one fan spinning slowly, and you can barely hear it in a quiet room, but if the laptop is on a soft surface, it tends to heat and the fans spin up.

Edit: Has anybody else recieved their 2510p?

 

Man, this is tough. I'm on the verge of ordering a Sony TZ... but I know better, really I do. I know I should get the HP.

Do you know if the hard drive is 3mm or 8mm high? It makes a big difference when it comes to SSD upgrades.

 

Dear Hannes,

Could you tell us:
- How long it takes in Ubuntu to start OpenOffice Writer with, say, a 1-page document
- More or less how warm is the bottom of the laptop during normal operation, i.e. does it feel warm if you have it on your lap?
- If you watch a DVD using vlc/mplayer or Windows, does the fan start? After how long (please provide ambient room temperature)? Does the laptop become noisy? Does it become unbearably hot under the laptop?
- You mention the screen does not view well at certain angles. Could you show us some pictures at various angles, say 30deg above, below, and left/right?

Many thanks if you can answer. So far it seems you're the first to have posted any user experience with the HP 2510p.

-Thomas

 

Hello

I'm not sure about the height of the HDD, bout I would think that you could swap it for an SSD, (and I'm planning of doing that somewhere in the future).

The first start of OOo takes around 15 sec, but if you have opened it before in a session, and it is loaded in the memory it takes only about 2 sec.

The back right corner, where the fan is located becomes warm, but not hot. Otherwise the laptop keeps cool, and on the keyboard side it is cool even in that corner. When watching a dvd or during some hevy cpu activity the whole back edge becomes warmer.

During a dvd the fan spins at the normal speed and the dvd-drive makes a bigger noise than the fan. (The fan of my desktop machine is much louder than the drive and the fan). If you are in a really quiet room you can hear the low whirling sound. The cpu stays at around 60C, while normal operation is around 45-50C. The temperature points for the fan activity are at 40C, where the fan starts, 50C, 68C, 82C and 88C. The room temperature is around 25C.

I've uploaded some screen pictures in ther same folder. (Sorry for the blurryness).

 

Could you please let me know what kernel boot option you used? I'm trying to install Ubuntu on my 2510p, but am having problem with the ide controller.

 

Got it, seems generic.all_generic_ide=1 fixes it

 

Hannes, Blinx,

Did you install Ubuntu with Vista (dual boot) on your 2510p?
How did you shrink the Vista partition?
It seems everybody on the planet trying to shrink an HP laptop with Vista and SATA drive is going through immense difficulties.
Vista's lame partition resize will only shrink by 7 GB or so. Many people report that Gparted on an HP with SATA causes Vista to be unbootable. Trying to defrag the drive with either Vista's "no visual feedback" defragmenter won't help. Defrag with JkDefrag won't help either because of numerous unmovable blocks.

So if you managed to substantially reduce the size of your Vista partition on the HP (and keep it bootable), please tell us how to proceed.

Many thanks,

-Thomas

 

I answer my earlier question...
To shrink the Vista partition from 96 GB to 30 GB takes 2 or 3 iterations:

1. 
   Do an inital shrink by following instructions on this Howto #1:
   http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/
   Cleanup and disable all items as indicated in the howto.
   Use a trial version of PerfectDisk to defragment:
   Menu Configuration --> Drive Properties: Tab "Defragmentation Settings" select "Aggressive free space consolidation". Tab "Offline Defrag Settings" select "Master File Table..." and "Paging File".
   Defragment non-system files on the partition: menu Defragment --> Entire Drive.
2. In PerfectDisk: Defragment the system files (this will reboot your laptop and seems to continue a bit even after Vista has restarted): menu Defragment --> Offline (System Files only)
3. Shrink the partition using Vista using Howto #2:
   http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/
   Shrink the most you can. This will almost half the size of your current partition.
4. Do steps 2 and 3 again (one or two iterations)
5. Restore the Pagefile and Hibernate files, as indicated towards the end of Howto #1.
6. Download and burn on a CD Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu version 7.10 gutsy tribe-5 (still in development as of September 2007. Stable version 7.04 does not boot well on the HP 2510p) from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/gutsy/
   Boot the Ubuntu CD, activate wireless (press on Bluetooth logo at base of screen) as soon as the laptop is switched on and follow the instructions starting at the Install Ubuntu section:
   http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first

Notes:
- I did not need to add kernel boot option: generic.all_generic_ide=1
- Sound does not seem to work at this stage, although the screen base
buttons are detected
- I don't yet know what to do with the OS_TOOLS HP Recovery partition

 

After 2.5 months with the HP 2510p here are my second impressions and some critique. To summarize: good specs but design could have been better:

• The battery lasts longer than expected when the backlight is sufficiently dimmed. Using the standard battery I could get close to 7 hours writing text and editing Visio diagrams in Vista.
• The brightness auto-adjust is nice when working in some conditions but it lacks damping. That is, when working on a train, every passing electric line pole causes the screen to brighten briefly. Also, hand movements (I have white skin) on the keyboard may cause the screen to adjust brightness.
• Screen brightness is great, even outdoors
• The touch-sensitive volume adjustment is barely usable
• I miss a middle mouse button for Linux. Pressing the big rubber buttons together under the space bar is difficult
• The fact that the keyboard is black and the overall design has crevices means that dust accumulates and is very visible.
• The microphone works wonderfully. The unique speaker gives great sound. Great for Skype.
• ACPI works well in Vista and more or less well in Linux: under Ubuntu+Gnome you'll probably have to change to HIBERNATE_MODE=platform. At the time I write this there is a bug in KDE that will leave you with no backlight after suspend-resume. This means that Kubuntu won't work perfectly on this laptop yet.
• Something probably has to be tweaked to get the SD card reader to run in Linux
• Assembly defficiencies: the trackpoint blue tip was hard to insert because the protective black sheet under the keyboard is misaligned. The trackpoint tip touches the screen when it is closed and leaves a mark. There is also a bump close to the touch-sensitive area above the keyboard near the screen. This area rubs against the screen frame and leaves a 3cm mark just left of the HP logo. The PCMCIA guide rail is not properly fastened to the motherboard. The fingerprint reader's electronic board is not fastened properly to the upper hand-rest plate and rubs against PCMCIA cards when they are inserted or retrieved (ugly friction sound). I plan to send my laptop back to have it fixed. But hey guys, this is Made in China, right? We shouldn't ask for too much, even from an HP business-level computer that wasn't designed to be an object to fall in love with.